You are here

Libel Defence

Here then you see, gentlemen, that the whole gist of the offence was the
defendant's intention, and you see the doctrine admitted in its fullest extent
by the crown officer, the judge and the jury. You see also the noble spirit of
independence, the firm and unbending integrity, which distinguish an English
court of justice. There an innocent man was protected by the law against the
whole power of the House of Commons, as your verdict will protect me to-day
against the persecution of the sessions. Without this doctrine of intention, the
law, instead of being a parental guardian of the press, protecting its lawful
acts, and checking its abuses, would be a tyrant binding it with chains.

It has been said by the eloquent Mackintosh, "That an English jury is the
most refreshing prospect that the eye of accused innocence ever met in a
human tribunal." I feel this day that the sentiment is just. An English
jury will do justice to the poorest wretch on earth, though menaced by the
proudest oppressor. The victim may be bound, and prepared for sacrifice, but
an English jury will cast around him the impenetrable shield of the British
law. Gentlemen, I feel that your verdict will rescue me from the perils with
which I have been environed. You will not deliver me over to the tender
mercies of the sessions. You will tell these jobbing justices that they should
have come into court with clean hands; that they should have "set their
house in order "—their Poorhouse and their Workhouse, before they came to
claim a verdict to repair their rotten reputations. You will not send me to
serve the commissioner of Bridewell, or permit them to make me the first
tenant of the stocks they erected in the market-place, but never have used.

I thought of gathering from the newspaper files the various attacks that
have been made from time to time upon the sessions and their officers, in order
to exhibit to you the gradual swelling of this volume of abuse of which their
worships complain. The task would have been an amusing one, and although
it would prove that my persecutors had been for years deaf to the complaints
of the community, and had only become suddenly sensitive, when they thought
the whole might be answered by a bill of indictment, the process would have
been tedious, and I have already taken up too much of your time.

Gentlemen, I have thus gone over the facts that rested on my mind at the
time I published the alleged libel; I have shown the bearing and depth of the
impressions they made; and have, I trust, convinced you, of the entire absence
of any malicious motive. I have also stated to you what I believe to be the
sound and rational construction of the English law; and I have read to you
the eulogiums which Britons on the other side of the Atlantic have passed on
the value of the press. I now put it to you, whether you will or not, as an
English jury would, take all the circumstances of the case into consideration to
rebut the legal inference of malice; and I ask you, if you will not extend to
the press of your country the same rational protection which the British press
enjoys? Can you err, in following the example of that country, which has
been so long the home of liberty; whose noble institutions have been the
fruits of free discussion, and under whose banner and whose laws we are now
assembled? I do not ask you to set the press above that law which Coke calls
"the perfection of reason"; but I ask you to cleanse me in that wholesome
stream of British authorities revered at home, and imparting its benevolent and
invigorating influence to the most distant portions of the empire.

Will you, my countrymen, the descendants of these men, warmed by their
blood, inheriting their language, and having the principles for which they
struggled confided to your care, allow them to be violated in your hands?
Will you permit the sacred fire of liberty, brought by your fathers from the
venerable temples of Britain, to be quenched and trodden out on the simple
altars they have raised? Your verdict will be the most important in its consequences ever delivered before this tribunal; and I conjure you to judge me
by the principles of English law, and to leave an unshackled press as a legacy
to your children. You remember the press in your hours of conviviality and
mirth—oh ! do not desert it in this its day of trial.

If for a moment I could fancy that your verdict would stain me with crime,
cramp my resources by fines, and cast my body into prison, even then I would
endeavour to seek elsewhere for consolation and support. Even then I would
not desert my principles, nor abandon the path that the generous impulses of
youth selected, and which my riper judgment sanctions and approves. I would
toil on and hope for better times—till the principles of British liberty and
British law had become more generally diffused, and had forced their way into
the hearts of my countrymen. In the meantime I would endeavour to guard
their interests—to protect their liberties; and, while Providence lent me
health and strength, the independence of the press should never be violated in
my hands. Nor is there a living thing beneath my roof that would not aid
me in this struggle : the wife who sits by my fireside; the children who play
around my hearth; the orphan boys in my office, whom it is my pride and
pleasure to instruct from day to day in the obligations they owe to their profession
and their country, would never suffer the press to be wounded through
my side. We would wear the coarsest raiment; we would eat the poorest
food; and crawl at night into the veriest hovel in the land to rest our weary
limbs, but cheerful and undaunted hearts; and these jobbing justices should
feel, that one frugal and united family could withstand their persecution, defy
their power, and maintain the freedom of the press. Yes, gentlemen, come
what will, while I live, Nova Scotia shall have the blessing of an open and
unshackled press. But you will not put me to such straits as these; you will
send me home to the bosom of my family, with my conduct sanctioned and
approved; your verdict will engraft upon our soil those invaluable principles
that are our best security and defence.

Your verdict will, I trust, go far towards curing many of the evils which
we have been compelled to review. Were you to condemn me, these men
would say there is no truth in those charges, there is nothing wrong, and
matters would continue in the old beaten track. If you acquit me, as I trust
you will, they must form themselves into a court of inquiry for self-reformation;
they must drive out from among them those men who bring disgrace
on their ranks, and mischief on the community in which they reside. But,
gentlemen, I fearlessly consign myself, and what is of more consequence, your
country's press, into your hands. I do not ask for the impunity which the
American press enjoys, though its greater latitude is defended by the opinions
of Chancellor Kent; but give me what a British subject has a right to claim
impartial justice, administered by those principles of the English law that
our forefathers fixed and have bequeathed. Let not the sons of the Rebels
look across the border to the sons of the Loyalists, and reproach them that
their press is not free.

If I wished to be tried by your sympathies I might safely appeal to you,
who have known me from my childhood, and ask if you ever found malice in
my heart, or sedition in my hands? My public life is before you; and I know
you will believe me when I say, that when I sit down in solitude to the labours
of my profession, the only questions I ask myself are, What is right? What is
just? What is for the public good? I am of no party; but I hold that when
I am performing my duty to the country, I am sincerely doing that which I
engaged to do when I took the press into my hands. You will hear the
Attorney-General close this case on the part of the Crown, but do not allow
yourselves to be won by his eloquence from the plain facts and simple principles
I have stated. I must, however, do that gentleman the justice to acknowledge
that in the conduct of this prosecution I have received nothing but courtesy at
his hands. As an officer of the Crown he is bound to perform this public duty,
but I well know that persecutions of the press are little to his taste. When
urged at times by members of the Assembly, over which in his capacity of
Speaker he presides, to resent attacks made on that body in The Nova Scotian,
his answer has invariably been : "No! let the press alone; if we cannot stand
I his powers of oratory, how I could have set this case before you!

" Were I Brutus,And Brutus Antony, there were an AntonyThat should move the very stones, "

not of Halifax to mutiny and sedition, but the broken stones in Bridewell to
laughter and to scorn. The light of his penetrating intellect would have
revealed the darkest recesses of municipal corruption; and with the hand of
a master he would have sketched the portraits of these jobbing justices, and
hanging them around the walls of Bridewell, would have damned them to
imperishable renown.

To the gentlemen of the bar, who surround me, my thanks are also due.
They have sympathized with the press in this its day of persecution; they
have sent me books and volunteered assistance; and although the press
sometimes bears upon them, those who are and will be the brightest ornaments of
the profession have been most forward in endeavouring to sustain it. Their
studies teach them the value of free discussion; they know the obligations
which Englishmen owe to the press; and they well know, that as the securities
of life and property were strengthened by its influence, so would they be
destroyed beneath its ruins.

Gentlemen, I must apologize for the time which I have occupied, and for
the errors and imperfections of this defence. But I now leave it in your
hands, confident that you will discharge your duty and do me justice. I have
never shrunk from responsibility, and I would again remind you that I would
rather be cast into a prison for years than meet you in after life to reproach me
with having misled you this day by false statements of fact or law. I have
not done so, and I feel that I am entitled to your verdict. The press has
constantly vindicated and maintained the independence of juries; English
juries have been the steady friends and protectors of the press; and I now
commit myself and the press of Nova Scotia to your keeping, asking only for
justice, sanctioned by English law.

The delivery of this speech occupied about six hours and a
quarter. The defendant was frequently interrupted by expressions
of popular feeling. The Attorney-General, Mr. S. G. W. Archibald,
rose to reply, but was interrupted by the Chief-Justice, who said that
as the hour was late, and the jury had been confined so long, it
would be better to adjourn the court. Mr. Murdoch remonstrated;
Mr. Howe, he believed, had brought his defence to a close much
sooner than intended in order to avoid the necessity of adjourning
the trial. It would be unfair, therefore, to allow the other side the
against its assaults, we deserve to fall." That, I doubt not, would have
been his advice to the magistrates had they deigned to consult him. But oh! had
advantage of the night to reconstruct their case. Mr. Howe begged
the court to believe that he did not wish to shut out anything that
could shake his statements; all he wished was to have the matter off
his mind. The jury were consulted, and the foreman expressed their
wish to remain; it was therefore determined to do so, but the crowd
and the excitement being so great, and the difficulty of preserving
order evident, his Lordship adjourned the court.

Welcome to the business centre for the Nova Scotia Legislature. This section holds debates and transcripts, bills and statutes, committee meetings, and more. Find historic or legislative current documents, videos and audio files.

Are you curious about who supports the House the Assembly? Do you want to learn how the Legislature operates? Do you want to learn about the history of the Legislature or view our media archive? This is the place for you.

Learn how you can participate in the legislative process, plan a trip to visit Province House, and explore job opportunities. Find out what’s happening at the Legislature on social media and in our calendar of events.